Elder Scrolls V developer diary gives an inside look into the sounds of Skyrim

By Stephany Nunneley

Bethesda has released a developer diary for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which focuses on the music, sounds, and voice talent in the RPG.

On the music end of things, a choir was brought in to sing the main theme to the game, and it was all based around an idea game director Todd Howard had pertaining to barbarians.

“I had this idea that the music for Skyrim would be the Elder Scrolls theme, but sung by a barbarian choir,” said Howard. “So I called Jeremy Soule who does our music, and told him, and he was like ‘Okay, what are they singing’? They are singing this song in the Dragon language to the theme of Elder Scrolls.”

Howard also enlisted the help of Bethesda writer and senior designer Emil Pagliarulo to write a song in dragon language that rhymes with the Elder Scrolls theme, that when translated into English also makes sense and rhymes.

So Pagliarulo, who after sitting on it for a while, went home one weekend, heated up some mead, wrote the lyrics and brought them into work on Monday.

For the choir, there were only about 30 members in it, but the choir director and Soule had the men do three passes on the lyrics, and when added together it sounds like a choir of 90.

Awesome.

Watch the entire things below, as it also discusses the variety of NPC voices you will here in the game.

The soundtrack is now up for pre-order. Details on that are through here.

Skyrim is out in eight days.

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